“Well put, old chap. Clearly and succinctly, I’ll say. He would, indeed, have to be all those things. And he was about five feet eight inches tall, and not a heavy weight, and he wore white flannels and tennis shoes and carried in his hand something painted red.”
“Marvellous, Holmes, marvellous!” I managed to ejaculate, though I was nearly struck dumb at his speech. “Now, I won’t be your Watson, unless you tell me how you picked up, or made up, all that.”
“Of course, I’ll tell you. You well know I’m not the sort of mutt that likes to be mysterious. And, too, I want your corroboration. First, you see the print on the white painted window sill of what can only be the rubber sole of a tennis shoe. You see there’s by no means a full foot-print, but there is enough to show the nubbly sole.”
He was right. I could discern clearly, though faintly, a few of the imprints undeniably made by a sole of a tennis shoe.
“Not enough to tell whether the wearer of the shoe had his foot turned in toward the room or outward,” I offered.
“No,” he returned, eying me sharply, “but the law of probabilities makes me believe it is turned outward. It is hard to think of the murderer poising himself on the sill and diving into that black water, but far harder to visualize him coming in by such an entrance!”
“Go on,” I said, a bit crossly, for I didn’t at all like it.
“Our friend, the murderer, was about five feet eight, because I am five feet ten and a half, and here at the sides of the window frame, we see two sets of fingerprints, faint again, but there, and they are at a height of two and a half inches below where mine would strike if I took hold to pull myself up to the window sill.”
“You can’t get anything from those prints,” I told him. “They’re too faint. A mere hint only.”
“I only need a mere hint. And anyway, I’m only proving the exit of our criminal by this window, and so down into the lake.”